How to make a Classroom Slideshow - Part Two

Part One - Getting Everything Ready - in case you missed it

Part Two – Adding Pictures to iMovie

Now that we have iPhoto and iTunes all taken care of, its time to get down to business.

Step 1 - Adding Photos

First thing you need to do is open up iMovie.

Go up to file and click “New Project” to start a new iMovie

 

Next you can pick a project theme.  I usually go with "No Theme" but the choice is yours.

Give your project a name – once again I usually name mine with my name and the year.   

The next box under this is the aspect ratio.  I leave it in widescreen.  I made a few slideshows at the beginning of my DVD making career in Full Screen and didn’t like it.  Most TVs are widescreen now anyways.

Click “Create”

Now you will see the iMovie dashboard.  It probably has some fancy technological name, but I just refer to mine as my dashboard.  This is the screen you will use to put all of your pictures, text, transitions, and music together.

The first thing you need to do once you've created a new project is add your pictures.   

Click on the button that looks like a camera, this will be towards middle right-hand side of your dashboard.

Click on the white menu bar and all of your iPhoto albums should be visible.  Choose the album with all of your slideshow pictures.  Your slideshow pictures should then be visible underneath the menu bar.

Next you will want to drag your pictures to black box at the top left side of your dashboard.  To drag all the pictures at one time, click the first picture, press the shift key and hold it down, scroll to the bottom, and click the last picture.  Then you can release the shift key and drag and drop all the pictures to the correct place.

It may take a few minutes to add all of your pictures.  Be patient and go get a snack while you’re waiting.

If your pictures are all visible in the top left box of your screen you are ready to go!

If you haven’t already done so, I would go ahead and switch the iMovie dashboard to full screen.   

To do this: click the double ended arrow (does this thing have an actual name?) at the top right of the iMovie window and your dashboard will take up your entire screen.   

Much easier to work with!  

If you want to get out of full screen just move your mouse up to the top right and you will see the same double ended arrow (except this time the arrows are pointing in at each other) with a blue background.  Just click and your dashboard will go back to normal size.

Step 2 - Editing Photos

Notice that as you move your mouse around on top of the pictures in your project, the large individual picture on the right side of your dashboard changes as well.  If you want to focus on a particular picture, click on the small version and a yellow outline will appear around it.

 

Pardon the blurriness of this picture but I wanted to really zoom in and show you some editing tools. 

Once you click on a picture and the yellow outline appears, you can see some photo editing icons.   You can access these icons elsewhere, but I like to use the ones on the pictures.

• The top icon is what you click to crop, rotate, or modify the Ken Burns effect on each picture.  You will become very familiar with this icon in about 5 minutes.

• The next icon shows you how long the picture slide will appear before moving on to the next slide.  This cannot be clicked on, so if you want to change how long your slideshow stays on the picture, you’ll have to click on the bottom icon.

• The bottom icon is the Precision Editor – If you click on this gear, a drop-down menu will appear.  I only ever use “clip adjustments” if I want to change the duration of a picture.  But we wont worry about that until we start adding transitions between pictures.

Select your first picture in the slideshow by clicking on it.  The yellow outline should appear.  

Click on the crop button.  You will see several buttons across the top of your individual picture.

• Fit – click if you want the entire image to appear for the duration of the slide – no zooming in or out.  (I always use fit on my vertical photos)

• Crop – click if you want to get rid of some of your picture’s background or want to make the picture a close up.

• Ken Burns – this is where you modify the zoom in or zoom out of the photo--You do not have to do this--It is very time consuming, but the result is a very nice effect.  So you can choose to use Ken Burns on some, all, or none of your photos- the alternative would be to choose Fit.

• Allow Black – black on the sides of some pictures doesn’t bother me, but if it bothers you just click this button once and the black will disappear.

• Left and Right Arrows – click these to rotate your picture if you need to.

• Play button – (looks like a play button on a DVD player) – click this to view your Ken Burns effect.  If you clicked fit for all of your pictures, you wont need this.

• Done – click this if you are editing only one photo at a time and you're finished.  If you are editing all of your photos at once, like I do, don’t click done until you're finished editing all photos.  To keep your dashboard in edit mode, just keep clicking on the next picture to modify it, and so on.

Here you need to make a decision:

Quick Edit - If you want to spend as little time as possible modifying these pictures you are going to want to choose Fit when editing all photos.

• Start with the first picture in your project.  Click the crop button to get into edit mode, and start clicking the Fit button on every photo.  I’m sure there is probably a quicker way to do this, but I don’t know it.

Quality Edit (its not really any better than Quick Edit, I was just going for a cute title) - If you want to take a little more time and use the Ken Burns effect on pictures keep reading. 

• You will want to start by clicking on the first picture in your slide show.  You will notice a green box around your picture that says START.  This is where the Ken Burns effect starts.  I try to make sure this box is centered on whoever or whatever is in the photo.  You can make the box bigger or smaller if you want simply by clicking and dragging on one of the green lines. 

• Once you have the Ken Burns effect starting where you want, click once on the box and you will notice that the red END box becomes more prominent.  You can then adjust the end box to finish zooming where you want.  Again you can make this box larger or smaller simply by clicking on the red lines and dragging.

• If, like me, you get a little click happy and accidentally go to the End box when you needed the Start box, just click again and you will be able to modify the Start box again.

• If you choose to use the Ken Burns effect, make sure you check the start and end boxes for all of the pictures...otherwise you may have a few heads cut out as the picture zooms in or out.

• It is really difficult for me to use Ken Burns effect on vertical pictures.  I almost always just click the FIT button on my vertical pictures.

The photo editing part of slideshow creation can be a little time consuming, and a little boring, but I like to think of my photos as the meat and potatoes of my slideshow.  Everything else: the transitions, text, music, are just the decorations.  If your pictures aren't edited properly, your slideshow wont look as nice.  So make sure you take the time to do it right.  

Step 3 - Check It Over

Miss Kriss’s Tip – after I edit all of my photos, I like to go up to View and click on “Play in Full-Screen Playback Mode.”  

 I like to watch my slideshow in full screen with no music, transitions, or text; just to check all my photos and make sure I like how everything looks.   

(Nothing is worse than having everything finished, getting ready to burn your DVDs and realizing, that the Ken Burns effect zoomed in on a student’s chin instead of their face)  

I try to make sure my photos are exactly the way I want them before moving on to anything else.  That’s my OCD talking, but it helps make good slideshows and keeps me from having to go back and fix things later on.

Check out all the steps of how to make a classroom slideshow...

Part One - Getting Everything
Part Two - Adding Pictures to iMovie
Part Three - Adding Text & Transitions
Part Four - Adding Music & Finalizing your Slideshow
Part Five - Exporting iMovie and Creating the iDVD Menu
Part Six - Burning DVDs and Putting on the Finishing Touches


Stay tuned for Part Three - Adding Text & Transitions!
This is where it starts to get fun!